


The Red Room

by sawbones



Series: The Red Room [1]
Category: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (Video Games)
Genre: (Unresolved Normal Tension), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sick Fic, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 07:44:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16013438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawbones/pseuds/sawbones
Summary: “Doc,” she said, her pale eyes flicking back to him. There was a lot unsaid in the beat of silence that followed, apologies and questions and needles. She cleared her throat lightly, “Take care of him. Take care of each other. What comes next is not gentle, not good. I trust you to keep your head. You’re going to need it.”--When a careless mistake lands them in quarantine, it's not the disease that's their biggest problem - it's each other.





	The Red Room

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my main's birthday, September 16th. Happy Birthday Doc!
> 
> Massive thanks to [Jayvee11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jayvee11/pseuds/Jayvee11) / [erikthorn](http://erikthorn.tumblr.com) and [markster981](https://markster981.tumblr.com/) for helping beta/read over this mess. Bless you both.

It was bitterly cold in the bare breezeblock corridor, just as it was everywhere in the hastily constructed base. Gustave kept the heating in the medbay as high as it would go, which wasn’t high enough, and kept himself bundled up in as many clothes as he could fit under his flak jacket. He had on so many pairs of socks he could barely lace up his boots, and he still couldn’t feel his toes.

“I really wish you’d let me at least look at you,” Gustave said as he leaned against the door to the medbay, hands tucked under his arm to keep his fingers from getting stiff, “Olivier may be worse for wear after this little spat, but I know he’s not exactly a featherweight.”

Tachanka’s broad shoulders bounced as he laughed. He seemed about as bothered by the fight as he was by the cold - like the rest of the Spetsnaz, not in the slightest. Gustave could still see the bloom of a fresh bruise crawling out from under his balaclava around his left eye, and a smear of dried blood in the wool over his mouth.

“Don’t worry about me, Doc. Worry about your compatriot,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand, “He is a lucky man Basuda was not here. Next time, maybe not so lucky.”

“Lucky? You broke his _wrist,_ Alexsandr,” Gustave said. He should have been furious, really. He should have been in the middle of writing a recommendation for disciplinary action to Six. Instead, he felt more like an exhausted parent scolding a child.

“And I’ll break the other one if he ever puts hands on Lera again,” Tachanka said. He didn’t sound angry either, despite the fact that with the help of Shurat and Timur, he’d just put another operative in the medbay. He sounded blandly amused, but then again, he always did.

“I think Lera can fend for herself,” Gustave said.  

“Of course. She kicks my ass. She kicks anyone’s ass,” Tachanka said with a bob of his head, “But Lerochka is Spetsnaz, and Spetsnaz is Spetsnaz.”

Gustave sighed. He could see his breath in the air. He didn’t know what he was trying to say to Tachanka since there was no point in waving his disapproval in his face. He’d already overheard Lera chew all three of them out for jeopardising the mission - and their careers - over petty grievances, and she was a damn sight more convincing than he could ever be.

He was right about Basuda, though; ordinarily Maxim was a serious and level-headed man, but his relationship with Lera was...complex, it seemed - at the very least that of mentor and mentee. It would not have worked out well for Olivier. Gustave found he didn’t really care either way. Tachanka clapped him on the shoulder and gave a broad smile that crinkled the corner of his eyes. It was a dismissal, of course, one Gustave was happy to take.

 

\--

 

The medbay itself was one of the few rooms in the base that was both completed and in frequent use before the takeover. It wasn’t a large room, already cramped with four beds, a desk, and some cabinets. The door was heavy and red, almost vault-like, air-tight with a small porthole window. Olivier was where he’d left him: lying on a cot on the far side of the room, turned to face the wall just in case Gustave didn’t notice he was still sulking. There was a stent in his nose and a splint on his wrist, which he kept cradled to his chest.

Despite what Gustave had said, it was fractured and not properly broken, which was just as well since there weren’t any supplies for setting a bone, no cast-making materials or x-ray machines, not even any for-purpose slings. In fact, there was very little in the way of supplies for any kind of medical emergency - except for an outbreak. Viral, chemical, or otherwise, the medbay and adjacent lab seemed to be specifically geared towards containing some kind of contamination. They had double-sealed doors and self-contained air conditioning units, hazmat suits, and even a decontamination chamber, though the latter had still been under construction when they found the base.

Discovering the base had been the last clue in pinpointing the location of a deadly bio-weapons cache Rainbow had been tracing for months. They had narrowed it down to somewhere in northern Europe, and while Svalbard wasn’t exactly anyone’s first guess, it was isolated enough that the White Masks thought they’d be safe, with clear sea-routes to Russia, Scandinavia, and the UK. The terrorists had hidden the weapons in one of the many abandoned mines in the archipelago and built the bunker-like base close enough to the foot of a glacier that it would be swallowed up in a few years. It had all been perfect in theory, but the isolation had made them complacent: Six had pulled together a cold-weather specialist Spetsnaz-CBRN team with Gustave as support, and they’d cleared the place out within hours of landing.

However, finding the weapons was one thing - extracting and securing them was entirely another. That’s where the CBRN element came into play. Intel had told them the bombs were biological in some way, but not how or what, so Lera and Olivier were essential to the operation. It should have been easy, really, and in a way it was - right up until it wasn’t.

Gustave sat at his desk with another sigh. He still hadn’t gotten a straight answer out of anyone as what exactly had happened, other than something occured in the final stage of the extraction to piss Lion off enough to swing for Lera - in front of half the Spetsnaz squad, of all people. The operation had been a total success otherwise, so he couldn’t imagine what it could have been about.

Olivier hadn’t moved an inch since Gustave had came back, silent and still. He could have been mistaken for sleeping, if it wasn’t for the tension in his shoulders. Gustave rubbed the fresh crop of stubble on his chin and frowned. He’d never known Lera and Olivier to fight before. It might have been serious. It might have been nothing at all.

“I thought you were getting better at this,” he said.

The slight cock of his head was the only sign Olivier was listening, “At what?”

“At controlling your temper.”

There was a sharp sigh and Olivier rolled onto his back. Gustave could see him scowling a the ceiling; he knew he wanted to snap at him, but also didn’t want to prove him right. He wasn’t proud of the sliver of satisfaction he got from pushing Olivier’s buttons, but he did all the same.

“When am I being extracted?” he asked.

Gustave gave a one-shouldered shrug as he opened the desk drawer to see if there was anything worth reading in the haphazard bundles of paper the White Masks had left behind. The place was disorganised at best, which was unsurprising considering it was in the process of being set up when they captured it. Most of the documents seemed to be requisition orders, construction and shipment schedules, and a few shreds of frustratingly incomplete research. Lera had already taken everything remotely relevant to their operation, but Gustave didn’t have much else to keep him occupied in the meantime.

“You don’t need immediate med-evac so you’re not a priority,” Gustave said, distracted. He frowned at what appeared to be a medical report for one of the terrorists who had apparently fallen ill, “Being this far into the Arctic Circle at this time of year, transport won’t arrive until Lera has definitely finished securing and neutralising the bombs, so I imagine you’ll be leaving with the rest of us in a few days.”

Olivier gave a disagreeable grunt but Gustave paid him no mind: the files were far more interesting than a grown man pouting. With further digging, he found several more files, and they were all almost identical with the same symptoms - fever, disorientation, headaches, aggression, bleeding from the nose and mouth. It was highly infectious, with several medical staff among the casualties. Most of the files were censored with hasty scores of black marker, including any details of treatment or recovery.

If there _was_ any, Gustave corrected himself.

The White Masks might have been having issues with contamination from their own weapons, he surmised. It could have been the reason why construction wasn’t finished, and why it had been so easy to take the base. He pulled out his comms device and pinged Lera a short message about what he’d found. She responded within seconds to say she suspected as much but it was under control. No residual contamination had been detected, either in the base or in the men they had encountered. She then asked how Olivier was doing.

Well, there was one way to find out.

“What was it Lera did?” Gustave asked, glancing up from the comms device.

Olivier was silent for so long he assumed he was ignoring him, but then he pushed himself upright with his good hand and swung his legs over the side of the cot. He scrubbed a hand over his bruised and mottled face; even though the swelling had went down, he still looked like hell.

“The Spetsnaz had pulled back to a safe distance and we were finishing our sweep. There was one room left, a small enclave of bombs they were getting ready to move to the mines. EE-ONE-D was almost recharged, and I told her to wait so we could be sure - there’d been minimal resistance up ‘til that point but I didn’t want to fuck around when there’s live bios on the scene,” Olivier said. He sounded almost as exhausted as he looked, “She didn’t, of course. Promised me she had a clear line of sight and we were just wasting time.”

“There was someone there and she missed them,” Gustave guessed.

“Two. We managed to take them easily enough but it was sloppy. Things nearly went _very_ wrong - the canisters got damaged in the fight, and one of those bastards got a shot off so close to my head, I still can’t hear out of that ear properly,” Olivier said. It was obvious his temper was stirring again, but Gustave didn’t mind pressing further.

“The bombs were damaged?” he asked, leaving his desk to cross the room. He fished his otoscope out of his breast pocket; Oliver turned his head to offer his problem ear.

“Obviously we were able to control the leak. The bombs were neutralised before it could lead to a full blown contamination, only that room is on lock-down,” he said. Gustave hummed in consideration as he leaned into Oliver’s personal space to check there was no lasting damage - his ear and cheek felt hot to the touch, but it was unsurprising all things considered. His hearing would be fine in a few hours.

“Was that before or after Tachanka tried to make mincemeat of you?” he asked. His wry smile was met with a withering glare, “You don’t have enough friends to risk pissing them off, Olivier.”

“She nearly got us both killed. She could have killed _all_ of us if the contamination had been any worse,” Olivier said, pulling away, “I’m sick of not being listened to. I know what I’m doing, I deserve some respect. That’s what I told her when we got back to safety.”

“That’s something to be said in a mission report, not with your fists,” Gustave said lightly, slipping the otoscope back into his pocket.

“You sanctimonious bitch,” Olivier hissed. Gustave stepped out of reach, his hands raised in mock surrender.

“Careful,” he said, backing towards the desk, “Tachanka was just outside. I don’t think you could go two rounds with the Spetsnaz.”

He knew he wasn’t quite as beloved by the Russians as Lera, but Gustave was fairly sure he’d just have to ask nicely for a little back up if it was Lion in question - not that he would, of course, he was only so petty, but the threat of it was enough. Olivier lay back on his cot with a grunt, turning his back to the room once again.

If he was being honest, though, Gustave could believe what Olivier had said about how things had went on the mission. Lera could be impulsive and yes, even reckless. She hated wasting time when she could see a solution, and that had cause minor problems in past missions, but nothing that could have caused such serious consequences before. Gustave believed it came partly from working as a crisis specialist, and the fact that there was a very real chance she could be in a wheelchair in a matter of years. She felt she had to make every second count, both on and off duty. He thought she had been managing it better lately, but maybe he had been wrong.

Respect was earned, not demanded, or so the saying went, but what if that lack of respect could jeopardise lives? Olivier _was_ good at his job, as much as it choked Gustave to admit it, because he wouldn’t be part of Rainbow if he wasn’t. He would say personal feelings shouldn’t take precedence on a mission but then he’d have to call himself a hypocrite.

Gustave pulled out the comms device and told Lera that Olivier was fine.

 

\--

 

Gustave continued to peruse the files from the desk for a while, and studied some of the details Lera had sent him over the comms when she wanted a second opinion. She hadn’t came to see him in person since the incident, and seemed to be giving the medbay a wide berth, which was probably for the best. Without any disturbances, Olivier had managed to get a few hours of fitful sleep while Gustave worked.

When he eventually woke, it was with a stifled groan of discomfort that had Gustave on his feet in a split second. Olivier rolled onto his back, blinking as though the dim fluorescent lights were hurting his eyes. He was pale and clammy, his hairline darkened by sweat - a nightmare, Gustave reckoned. They all got them from time to time. He held out a bottle of water and two painkillers.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. He could be a medical professional first, and a bastard later.

“Like shit,” Olivier said. He sat up and took the pills first, then drained half the water bottle in two or three gulps. He looked unsteady.

“When was the last time you ate something?” Gustave asked. The answer was a noncommittal grunt, and he scoffed, “What, I need to feed you now too? Am I your mother?”

Truthfully, it was getting late and he was already planning on scrounging up some food from the Russians - what Timur could do with an MRE and some unlabeled tins was nothing short of witchcraft - so getting something for Olivier too wouldn’t be an issue, even if the ungrateful swine deserved to go hungry.

“Coffee?” Olivier added, just as Gustave was about to leave. He turned on his heel to tell him not to push it. He paused.

“What are you doing?” he asked. Olivier was struggling to shrug out of his heavy winter jacket, the sleeves of it caught around his elbows.

“What does it look like?” he snapped, “You have this place like an oven, you ridiculous sunflower. Would it kill you to turn off the heaters once in a while?”

Gustave blinked at him. It was twenty below freezing outside, compounded by the endless winter night and knifing gales; with the shoddy, incomplete construction, it was an uphill fight to keep the interior of the base above zero.

He went back to Olivier’s bed. He pulled off one glove, and put his hand to his forehead.

A fever.

“What--?” Olivier began, ducking away from the hand in question. He caught sight of Gustave’s serious expression and stilled, “What is it?”

“Your head,” Gustave said, letting his hand drop, “Does it hurt?”

“A little, I suppose. I--”

“And when you woke up, were you dizzy? Did you feel sick?”

The split second of hesitation was the only answer Gustave needed. He backpedalled to the door and before the realisation could even hit Olivier, he slammed his fist through the glass cover of the ominous yellow and black button beside it.

Several things happened at once: the cold, dim lights of the medbay flickered and went out, only to be replaced by a feverish red wash as the emergency bulbs flickered to life. The door sealed itself with a hiss and an audible _thunk_ of the lock sliding into place. Somewhere it the crawlspace over their heads, a self-contained generator whirred to life and began its valiant efforts in keeping clean air circulating.

“What the fuck have you done, Kateb?” Olivier said as he pushed himself to his feet.

“Fever, headaches, dizziness,” Gustave said, “You’re displaying the same initial symptoms as the terrorists who fell sick here.”

“Impossible. I had my gear on, and _obviously_ I made sure to inspect it before we began. Nothing could have gotten in,” Olivier said. The sweat was still beading on his face, “You’ve barely even looked at me, much less examined. It’s far more likely to just be a concussion!”

“You said Lera’s recklessness nearly got us all killed,” Gustave said, lifting his chin in defiance even as his stomach clenched hot with fear, “I’m not Lera.”

“You’re being ridiculous. Open the door.”

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he said, “Once the emergency procedures have been triggered, it only opens from the outside with a green-light code.”

Olivier paused, “What’s the code?”

Gustave said nothing. Olivier took a step closer.

“What’s the code, Kateb?”

“I don’t have it,” he said, careful not to sound like an admission, “It’s somewhere on the base. Lera or the others will have to find it. At least one of the terrorists would have--”

Olivier had Gustave pressed to the door with his uninjured hand around his throat before he could even finish his sentence.

“For a smart man, you can be really fucking stupid sometimes,” he hissed, his face inches from Gustave’s, “You’ve locked us in here with bare any food, barely any water, with help days or even weeks away - without making sure we had a way _out_?”

“You better get your hands _off_ me unless you want to meet your God sooner than you hoped,” Gustave said, every syllable dripping with ice even as he struggled to keep his breathing even.

Olivier’s gaze flicked down to the P9 jammed against his sternum. Gustave could be fast when he had to be. Olivier clenched his teeth hard enough to make the muscles in his jaw twitch. An urgent beeping noise cut across the tension, and it was only then he let him go. Gustave holstered his pistol with a deliberate wariness and answered the comms device.

“Doc, is everything alright?” Lera asked, her voice crackling with static over the poor connection, “The lights dipped and there’s an alarm somewhere that won’t stop. Sent the boys to find it.”

Gustave rubbed his throat and swallowed around the tightness that had nothing to do with nearly being throttled, “I quarantined the medbay. Olivier might be sick.”

“Sick?” she parroted.

“I am not sick,” Olivier shouted in the background.

“You saw the medical files for here, right?” Gustave asked, and she grunted in the affirmative, “Olivier mentioned one of the bio-weapon canisters was damaged during the sweep. Now he’s expressing some of the same symptoms of the terrorists who fell ill before we arrived.”

The answering silence was long enough to make him worry, but then the connection crackled back to life.

“Alright. First port of call, we need to establish what’s really going on here. Lion was in his full gear, so if whatever this shit is managed to breach that, we’re dealing with something much worse than we thought and we might all be in trouble,” Lera said, “Doc, I want you to keep monitoring Lion’s condition, and your own too. I’ve got the equipment to test for contamination out here, I can make sure me and the boys aren’t affected too. No signs yet, but we don’t know enough about this shit to be sure.”

Gustave nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. There was a part of him that was relieved Lera was taking control, and not scolding him for over-reacting.

“Lion,” she said, louder than before. Olivier gave no indication he heard her, continuing to stare holes in the wall by Gustave’s head, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for not hanging back. You were right. But I want you to forget that now. You’re going to hate it but you need to sit tight, and try not to give Doc too much hassle. He made the right call too. If it’s nothing, we’ll get this sorted in no time at all.”

“And if it isn’t nothing?” Olivier asked, turning his head only slightly.

“We’ll figure something out,” Lera said, “It’s what we do.”

 

\--

 

It had been hours since they had spoken to Lera, and it felt even longer than that. Gustave had tried to catch some sleep at his desk, but he couldn’t stop his mind from racing and his body from aching with the cold as the temperature steadily dropped. Olivier had went back to his silent brooding, which Gustave had to admit he preferred over being pinned to the wall. To say it was tense in the medbay after that was an understatement.

“The MREs look appetizing. Almost as good as ours,” Gustave said as picked out two from the emergency supply locker bolted to the wall, “Would you like the _pink_ meat paste, or the _grey_ meat paste? I hear the grey pairs well with a lively young beaujolais.”

Olivier didn’t respond to his joke, and he couldn’t blame him. Humor was neither of their strong points.

“Olivier, sick or not, you have to eat,” he pressed.

When he approached Olivier’s bed, it became apparent that he was sleeping, not sulking, and for a brief moment Gustave was struck by envy. He was already exhausted and their troubles had only just begun; then again, Olivier was probably only able to sleep because he was unwell. The ugly red of the emergency lights washed the colour from his skin, leaving him pale and clammy; his mouth was twisted in discomfort, his brow furrowed. He looked like he was in pain, even in repose, but maybe that was just how Olivier slept. He had done a lot of things that would make it hard for a man to rest easy.

They had to hope it wasn’t a concussion, then.

Gustave sat the MRE on the bed, just by Olivier’s hand. He didn’t really care if he ate it or not, but he had to show he’d at least tried, and that was roughly where his professional and personal concern for him ended. The motion was enough to cause Olivier to stir, however, his heavy lids fluttering with the effort of opening his eyes. His hand twitched, knuckles brushing the cool foil.

“Doc?” he asked, his voice raspy with sleep or fever.

Gustave didn’t respond. He turned from Olivier’s bed and went back to his desk on the other side of the room, but it still didn’t feel like enough space. He exhaled slowly, his breath clouding in front of his face. Quarantine meant they were shut off from the base’s central heating, so they only had a small convection heater which didn’t do much other than tax the isolated generator. It was cold enough that his lips ached, the skin thin and pinched. He pressed a hand over his mouth as though he could keep some of the heat from escaping, then let it drop again. It was already hard enough to breathe.

Movement caught the corner of his eye; Lera’s handsome face nodded at him from the other side of the portal window. She held up her comms device and pointed at it - the door was soundproof.

“How are things?” she asked when Gustave was close enough to the door, “All okay?”

“Could be worse,” he said, and he supposed it was true. Lera frowned, maybe expecting more. He didn’t feel like making small talk.

“I tested myself and the boys,” she said, “No trace of contamination. We’re all clear.”

Gustave gave a small but genuine smile at that, but it was short lived. He put his hand against the door, just below the window where she wouldn't see. The metal was biting, but his hands were already so cold it didn’t matter. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming.”

“I checked Lion’s gear,” she said. She looked conflicted, like it was hard for her to stay professional, but her voice was steady and her gaze unwavering, “There was a hole, in the shoulder. The bullet we thought _nearly_ hit him-- it clipped his suit at the seam, just high enough for his ballistics vest to hide it.”

“Just high enough to be missed,” Gustave said. He waited for it, the feeling of his stomach dropping to his boots.

“Just enough to let it in.”

Gustave turned to look at Olivier where he stood in the middle of the room on unsteady legs. His expression was unreadable, his hands clenched into fists at his side. Lera had to press herself against the door to see him.

“Lion--” she said, her breath fogging the glass.

“What sort of time frame are we looking at?” Olivier asked.

“Whatever it is, it works fast,” she said, “You know that already.”

“Survivable?”

Gustave met Lera’s eye and held it. Olivier hadn’t read any of the files they’d dug up.

“We don’t know for sure. The records were redacted: no information on treatment, survival rate - nothing but the symptoms,” he said, “Given that it was designed as weapon, one already green lit for deployment…”

“We _do_ have time, though,” Lera interjected, “I don’t know how much time, but-- your condition has been stable, right? The terrorists didn’t just drop dead instantly. I can figure this out.”

Olivier’s face creased into a scowl, “How?”

“Any way I can,” Lera said, “Even if they censored the medical records, they must have had a contingency plan here somewhere. They wouldn’t have blacked out the data if it didn’t mean something. There will be a cure - I just have to find it.”

“Finka--” Olivier began, but she cut him off by thumping her fist against the window. They could hear it through the speaker, but not through the door itself.

“Don’t even start, Lion,” she said, “What are you going to do, chew through the wall? You can barely stand as it is. You’re sitting this one out. If you want to help me: rest.”

Olivier looked like he could spit nails but kept his mouth shut - a wise decision, Gustave surmised. Lera was a headstrong woman at the best of times, but she was like a human bulldozer in a crisis. It was her job, after all, and she was the best at what she did.

“Doc,” she said, her pale eyes flicking back to him. There was a lot unsaid in the beat of silence that followed, apologies and questions and needles. She cleared her throat lightly, “Take care of him. Take care of each other. What comes next is not gentle, is not good. I trust you to keep your head. You’re going to need it.”

“Of course, Lera,” he said.

His voice didn’t sound like his own. It was tinny and indistinct, like he was hearing it through an old rotary phone. Lera’s face at the window was there and then it was gone; the hallway outside was dark, the portal just a disc of the void reflecting the red emergency lights. It lent the faint but lingering impression that they were completely isolated, not just in a locked room but somewhere else entirely - a fish tank, a submarine, some capsule lost in space. The claustrophobia rushed in like water and suddenly it was hard to breathe. He dared to look back at Olivier, and found him watching with eyes as sharp as glass; clear, cutting, shattered.

 

\--

 

Sleep eluded him still, though he was worried by more than the nip of cold in his fingers. It was possible rest would have came easier if he’d picked one of the four beds to lie on for a while, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the relative safety of his desk, his flimsy bulwark against Olivier on the far side of the room.

Olivier hadn’t slept either since Lera had left. Maybe he wasn’t tired any more after grabbing a few hours beforehand, or maybe he didn’t want to miss anything. Gustave watched him pace the floor like a caged animal. He did one-armed push-ups between the beds, sit ups with his feet hooked under the metal frame. He shucked off his jacket, claiming to be unbothered by the cold while his teeth chattered and sweat stained the collar of his cotton undershirt.

He should have been resting. He should have been bundled up to stay warm, to warm off the illusions of his fever. Gustave almost said so. Almost, almost. Olivier would do what he wanted anyway, what he thought was best. He usually did, so Gustave didn’t bother.

When he wasn’t pacing, he was praying. He knelt by the bed with his elbows in the mattress and a string of wooden rosaries between his clasped hands, and his lips moved without sound as he counted through his Hail Marys...or whatever they were. Somehow it was more distracting than the frustrated workouts; the click of the beads, the odd sigh of unspoken words. Gustave couldn’t block it out.

“Is something wrong?” Olivier asked, his eyes still closed.

“Where to even begin,” Gustave said. Olivier frowned.

“I can feel you staring,” he said, “It’s off-putting.”

Gustave’s smile was humourless, “I’m sorry. Remind me to bring a book next time.”

Olivier blinked into a scowl. He tucked his rosary away in his pocket and pulled himself up and onto the bed again. He seemed unsteady on his feet, Gustave noted, weak and trying to hide it. At least he had the sense to put his jacket back on.

“You’re not religious, are you?” Olivier said, and it was more of a statement than a question.

“Not at all,” Gustave said, “My mother was, and she raised me in the faith. I suppose it put me off.”

Olivier tilted his head a little, inviting an explanation. It was tempting just to leave it hanging in the air, since he didn’t really feel the urge to let slip any sliver of his personal life to him that he didn’t already know, but he was cold, and tired, and desperate for any sound but silent prayers.

“Well, you’re Catholic, you know how it is. She was pious, and wanted everyone to know it. She would make a big show out of giving to charity. She’d never leave the house without her hijab, and lectured the daughters of her friends who didn’t wear them. She would talk about virtues, and blessings, and the Holy Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him - and then, at the end of the day, she would go home and have a glass of wine with dinner and gossip about the same women who saw her as a sister,” Gustave said, “It was all so performative, you know? I couldn’t see the point of it.”

He loved his mother completely. She was a good woman, smart, with acid wit and little patience for fools. When he was old enough to say no to being forced to go to the mosque, she hadn’t even nagged at him despite all appearances. _You’ll find another way to make me proud_ , she said with a knowing smile, and so he did. After all, plenty of her friends had children who were doctors but oh, who had one who gave up his practice to join the FDHS? Who volunteered in crisis abroad? Who worked with counter-terrorist groups?

“Not all faithful are like that,” Olivier said. His face was hard; it was difficult to tell if he was offended or not.

“Obviously,” Gustave replied with a shallow shrug, “Perhaps there is a god. I’m quite sure I’ll find out someday, maybe sooner than later considering our situation. But until then, I’ll put my belief in mankind.”

Olivier’s eye roll was barely contained, “Does it bother you then, me praying?”

“There are many reasons why you bother me, Oliver; being religious isn’t one,” Gustave said with a quirk of his brow, “You wouldn’t care even if it was. Why would you?”

Olivier smiled - or at least came as dangerously close to smiling as Gustave had ever seen him. A twitch of his lips, a softening of his perpetual scowl. He was right, of course.

 

\--

 

He stripped the sheets off two of the other beds and gave them to Olivier. The third he kept for himself, the thin and rasping cotton pulled around his shoulders like a cheap shroud as he sat at his desk. It did nothing to ward off the cold, but he found himself less and less bothered by it anyway.

Despite the extra bedding, Olivier shivered in his sleep, still gripped by fever. _He_ said he wasn’t cold either.

Gustave’s comms device buzzed on the desk by his elbow. He contemplated ignoring it for some intangible reason, but the vibration was like a drill at the base of his neck.

“Lera,” he said by way of greeting.

“Doc. How’s the situation?"

He thought about it for a moment.

“Stable,” he said, “At least as far as I can tell without any equipment.”

All he had was the few essentials he carried on his person at all time for convenience: his thermometer, his otoscope, his stethoscope. A couple of tongue suppressors, maybe a bandaid or two tucked in one of his pouches. There was his frontline kit too, but sutures and bandages were next to useless unless he planned on carrying out his threat of shooting Olivier.

“I’ve had Six on broadcast since this began, more or less,” Lera said. She sounded tired; she wouldn’t have slept at all yet, of course, “This is a big fucking deal, apparently.”

Gustave nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. It _would_ be a big fucking deal, as she put it - not the fact his life was at risk, not Olivier’s, but the discovery of a chemical weapon that was unknown to them until now, fully developed and ready to deploy. Something new from the White Masks. A leaky container and a compromised base. At least there was limited scope for civilian casualties in Svalbard, but if they had waited any longer to intervene...

“She’s pulled Lesion from a sweep in Brazil to help us,” Lera went on, undeterred by the silence, “I’ve sent him everything we have, but I don’t know how much help he can give us. Along with the storms outside making communication a bitch, you can see our predicament.”

She sighed, and Gustave felt it. Liu Tze Long was informally a part of the CBRN Threat Unit, along with James Porter, Emmanuelle, and Gustave himself. They each had particular abilities and experience that meant they could run support for the unit in situations where others in Rainbow would be less effective - the Svalbard mission being an example.

Unfortunately, _support_ could only go so far.

“The boys say hello,” she said. He could hear the slight hitch of a smile coming through, “I think Timur is worried about you.”

“Timur can come and see me if he’s worried,” Gustave said, “I’m locked in a room down the hallway, not in prison.”

Lera hummed down the line, “You know how he can be, Doc. He says he doesn’t want to bother you, but I think he is afraid of what he might see.”

What he might see. Gustave frowned. Sitting in an office chair with a blanket wrapped around himself was a little sad, maybe, but hardly distressing.

“It doesn’t matter, I suppose. There are cameras in there anyway.”

“Lera--” Gustave began to warn, but she cut him off with a laugh.

“Don’t worry, no spying,” she said.

“Alright, alright,” he said, “Hello to the boys then, I suppose. Let Timur know that I’m not dead yet.”

“I’ll keep you up to date, Doc. Try and get some rest.”

He could have said the same thing, but the line cut before he thought to. He sighed and put his face in his hands, trying to scrub away the tiredness that clung to him. There was a nagging throb of pain behind his eyes, compounded by not sleeping, not eating, not doing anything but wallowing in red light.

His hands dropped to his lap. Olivier had been watching him, though Gustave couldn’t guess for how long. His eyes were flint chips in his bruised face, hard and sharp.

“Lera called,” Gustave said, because he wanted to leave the room and he couldn’t. He hated when Olivier looked at him like that, like there was something to see. He felt claustrophobic enough without being pinned in place by the palm of his eye.

“I know,” Olivier said after a moment, “I heard.”

Gustave smothered the curious pang of guilt before it could rear its ugly head.

“Go back to sleep, Olivier,” he said, “I’ll wake you if something happens.”

He didn’t go back to sleep, and still nothing happened.

 

\--

 

Gustave passed Olivier a fresh bottle of water and a blister pack with two tablets left. Even from behind, he could see him frowning as he examined the pills.

“How are supplies?” he asked.

“We have about a week’s worth of water left, more if we can ration better. Food is no issue, if you can stomach it,” Gustave said. He put one knee on the edge of the bed to steady himself, and coaxed Olivier to lean forward slightly, “Running low on painkillers though - maybe a day or two left.”

Olivier made a thoughtful noise. He didn’t flinch when Gustave slid an icy cold hand up the back of his sweat-damp undershirt. The metal of the stethoscope had to be colder. Oliver’s skin felt superheated in comparison, almost enough to sting Gustave’s fingers.

“My wrist will not be an issue,” he said levelly.

“Perhaps not your wrist, but without so much as ibuprofen to manager that fever, we might be in trouble,” Gustave said, “Breath in--”

Olivier took a deep breath, “We?”

“And exhale,” Gustave said, his eyes closed as he listened to Olivier’s chest. His breathing was slightly laboured but the lungs themselves sounded clear enough. The bruising from his beating avoided his kidneys and was mostly superficial, so he didn’t have to worry about that either. He slipped his hand out from under the shirt, a silent signal that he could start getting dressed again. He pocketed his stethoscope and sighed.

“I haven’t began exhibiting any symptoms yet,” he said. He picked up a scrap notebook he’d sat on the pillow and jotted down Olivier’s temperature and any changes. It was the only way he could keep any kind of formal track on how the disease was progressing. So far things were surprisingly stable, “I imagine it will only be a matter of time, considering proximity, lack of provisions, so on.”

Olivier shrugged back into his jacket and gathered the sheets about himself again. He popped the two pills out of their packaging and rolled them around the palm of his uninjured hand, his lips pursed in thought.

“Are you scared?” he asked.

“Terrified.” Gustave admitted.

There was no shame in it, since there was nothing he could do. He just had to own it, to work through it. He might have asked Olivier how he felt, but he knew the answer already. Whether it would be the truth was another matter. Pig-headed, lion-hearted Olivier.

He didn’t say anything, simply watched him with a curious tilt to his head. It felt accusatory, but Gustave wasn’t wholly sure he wasn’t just projecting in his exhausted state. He pushed away from Olivier’s bed and returned to his chair. He tossed the notepad and pen down on the no-man’s-land of the desk.

“I trust Lera,” he said, “I trust Six. They know what they’re doing. We’ll be out of here soon enough, we just have to be patient.”

“I don’t need your _reassurance_ ,” Olivier said. He turned away and tossed his pills back with a gulp of water.

“I know,” Gustave said, “I know.”

 

\--

 

Gustave gave up waiting and tried to sleep. He rested his head in his hands, on his arms, on the desk itself - anywhere but a bed. It didn’t help. His eyes stung; he could see red light whether they were open or closed.

How long had they been trapped? Three days, four days, maybe five. Maybe six. It skittered away from him when he tried to piece together the progression of hours. He felt like he was suspended in stasis, straddling the hard edge of...something. He didn’t really want to know. Didn’t need to know.

It was a lack of sleep, he told himself. It was a lack of real food. It was the cold. It was the stress.

It was disease.

Gustave pressed his fingers to the thin skin around his eyes. It was hot and slick with sweat. He wanted to claw his way out of his jacket and too-many layers, but he knew that was a bad idea. It was cold enough in the medbay that he could see his breath with every laboured sigh. He was sick. He was sick and sick and sick and--

“Kateb.”

Gustave twitched at his name. He let his hands drop to the desk, but struggled to look up again. Olivier was watching him, his face stony and impassable. A brooding guardian. A severe and handsome statue. He did look quite like Lera, even with the red lights washing out the red in his hair. Enough to look like siblings if he didn’t know better. All hard eyes and granite-cut cheekbones. Stubborn as donkeys both, with a temper to match.

Maybe there was truth to what they said about about redheads. Gustave smiled, and when Olivier slitted his eyes, he realised he’d been staring at him. There was a question in the jut of his chin, one that Gustave didn’t want to answer. He swallowed thickly. The silence was deafening.

“Call Finka.”

So Gustave called her, or maybe Olivier did. He remembered speaking but he wasn’t sure who to. Everything sounded distorted, syrupy, like an off-tempo record player. By the time Lera had dropped whatever she was doing and turned up at the medbay door, face to the glass, things had swam back to normal - mostly.

Lera looked exhausted. Her face was hard and gaunt, her pale eyes bruised by lack of sleep. She had sounded concerned on the call, and struggled to hide it.

“I’ve been conferring with Lesion when I can. Bouncing ideas off him has actually been quite helpful,” she said, rubbing at her scar where it nicked the bridge of her nose, “It seems the infection transfers far slower from person to person than it does from a contamination source directly. It’s not an uncommon feature in man-made diseases, meant so that people who were exposed unknowingly wouldn’t realise until they had already moved on and infected more people themselves.”

“That explains why Kateb began expressing symptoms later than I did despite technically being exposed on the same day, but if it’s so contagious, how did you and the Spetsnaz avoid falling ill?”

Olivier had crossed the room so he could speak to Lera face-to-face, as it were. He perched himself on the edge of the desk, his arms folded across his chest to hide the tremor in them. Gustave wanted to shove him off and away, wanted his space back. Instead he sat beside him with the comms device held awkwardly between them.

“It’s the nanobots, the ones that allow me to administer the adrenal surge,” Lera said slowly, like she couldn’t quite piece together the simplest explanation for them - well, for Gustave. Olivier was probably less out of his depth when it came to Lera’s tech, “We’re still trying to understand _how_ exactly, but they acted almost like their own independent immune system when faced with the pathogens - weak but enough to ward off the less aggressive second-hand contamination in me and the boys, and to stop your symptoms from feeling worse than a bad jag of flu.”

“Could this be the first lead in a cure?” Olivier asked. Lera bobbed her head with a shrug. There was something very Tachanka-like about the gesture that made Gustave want to laugh.

“I think so, yes. We just have to narrow down what in the bots was the effective agent - whether it’s something in the drugs or maybe even the zinc composite itself,” she said, “But this is the best lead we have so far. If I can crack this, all we need to do is find the access codes or call in a breach charge and then we can get out--”

Lera trailed off as she met Gustave’s gaze through the portal window, her face creasing with an ugly realisation. Her finger went slack on the comms device, her connection dropping with a blip of static.

“I didn’t get the bots,” he said. It didn’t scare him as much as it should have; it felt like just a simple truth. He could feel Olivier’s eyes on the side of his face, searching, demanding. Lera already knew, of course, “I wasn’t pushing in with you, so there was no point. I assume that is why I’m going through in a day what you’ve went through in five.”

“What does that mean?” Olivier asked.

Lera roused herself again, lifting the comms device to her mouth, “It doesn’t _mean_ anything, not yet.”

“It means that _you_ may have to play nursemaid for a change,” Gustave said, trying to pull together what dry humor he could find in the shifting situation.

Olivier didn’t seem to think it was funny. He pushed himself off the desk as though he was going to pace around the room, but instead wobbled in place. His mouth was pressed to a thin line as he avoided eye contact; he crossed the room to his bed and sat down, out of sight of the door. He was fizzing with a strange sort of tension that made the hair stand up on the back of Gustave’s neck. Fear or something else?

“Don’t worry,” Lera said, her voice soft and persistent as it faded in and out of Gustave’s head, “We’re nearly there. You just need to hold on a little longer.”

He got the impression she wasn’t speaking to him.

 

\--

 

Gustave blinked at the dial of his watch and wondered if it was nine in the morning or nine at night. It was impossible to tell in a room with no windows - not that any rooms on the base had windows, a luxury which few could afford once you got so far into the Arctic Circle. The lack of routine was throwing him off, sleep stolen in ten minute bursts that left him more tired and disoriented than when he first dozed off.

He could check the comms device, of course, but it was still hidden somewhere among the folds of Olivier’s bedsheets from the last time Lera had called. So, essentially lost to him. It didn’t matter, he supposed. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to be.

In any other circumstances, a week of uninterrupted peace and quiet would have been a godsend. As far as vacations went, he’d had better. He would have done anything to get back to his office at home base, nagged at by a revolving door of operators and their stupid, menial problems that absolutely did not require professional assistance. Gustave _loved_ those stupid, menial problems; he silently promised he’d never complain about James and Mark bothering him for aspirin because they were hungover and too lazy to go to a civilian shop ever again, if this was the alternative.

He wanted to go home. He wanted to sleep in a real bed. He wanted to drink an insensible amount of wine with Emanuelle and Julien and be forced to watch some truly atrocious movie. He wanted to call Timur on the phone and ask if possibly, if perhaps, if maybe he wanted to get dinner sometime? Because Gustave knew this really great little Italian restaurant not far from base, and it’s okay, really, if he didn’t like Italian because he could always order something in at home and--

And what.  

Really, what?

It was cold, and he had no wine and no bed and no bravado. He had a stiff-backed office chair and a stiffer colleague, and about as much affection for one as the other. He squinted at Olivier, sitting in his bed with his legs crossed at the ankle, rosary running through his fingers. He wasn’t praying, but he seemed deep in thought.

Gustave felt hot, and cold, but mostly just annoyed. Needles under his skin, prickling, itching. He wanted to pick at it. Pick at something.

“Who do you pray for?” he asked.

Olivier didn’t react right away, as though he hadn’t heard the question. After a moment, he raised his head with a small grunt of confusion, rosary hanging from slack fingers.

“When you pray,” Gustave went on because he felt like he was going to burst at the seams if he didn’t say something, “Are you praying for someone in particular or is it more of a general thing?”

From the look that shuttered across his face, there was a chance Olivier wasn’t going to entertain him with a real answer. He seemed wary of the question, like he was embarrassed somehow.

“Both, I suppose,” he said, “I pray for the situation we are in. I pray for our cause. I give thanks and ask for guidance, and clarity.”

Gustave nodded, but didn’t interrupt him.

“I pray for my family, of course, and for our colleagues. I pray for my son, and his mother,” he said. His gaze dipped for a second, his lips thinned, “Mostly my son.”

“Alexis,” Gustave said. If Olivier was at all surprised that he remembered, he didn’t show it, “How old is he now?”

“Fourteen.”

Gustave smiled, let his chin rest in one of his hands as he sat forward, “It’s so odd to think you have a teenage child when you still act so much like a teenager yourself.”

Olivier narrowed his eyes. He looked like he was about to take the bait, but then he paused.

“Kateb, don’t you realise how we’re more alike than you think?”

“No,” Gustave said, and meant it.

“I know you like to look down your nose at me, but consider it,” Olivier said, and Gustave had to stop himself from laughing out loud at the ego it took to assume he cared enough to judge him, “We both came from wealthy French families. Raised in religious households, and raised well. My sister is a surgeon, you know, so what if I had followed her? Would I be anything like you? And one mistake. One moment of weakness for someone you loved. Would you have walked my path?”

Gustave’s mind boggled at how to even answer that, “Well. I mean, historically speaking, there was never any risk of me getting someone pregnant in the first place.”

“Don’t be so literal,” Olivier hissed, apparently frustrated that Gustave had very little intention of buying into what could have been the start of a super-villain speech, “You must have known one person you would have done anything for. One person who could have ruined everything, even if it wasn’t like... _that_.”

Gustave’s smirk withered and died on his lips.

“There was,” Gustave said, “He did.”

Gustave knew he should stop there. He had no business saying it so casually, really, as though his throat wasn’t gripped by a sudden tightness that threatened to choke him. Olivier had no business asking such a thing either.

But he did ask. He wanted to know. He was eager, almost, if the slight lift of his brow was anything to go by. Gustave wanted to pick, but Olivier wanted to scratch.

“His name was Marcel,” he continued, still so light, still so airy, “He was born in Senegal but his parents emigrated to Paris when he was still a baby. We were classmates at medical school, but never really friends. We just moved in different groups, you know?”

Olivier always did have all the tact of a hammer.

“Along with the rest of my classmates, I assumed I’d never see him again after we graduated. We all moved on to residencies, private practices, NCOs. I joined the FDHS, of course, and ended up where I am now,” Gustave said. He had to clench his hands into fists to stop himself from picking at his nails, “We met almost exactly ten years later, on a vaccination run in Mali by chance, by coincidence, by fate. I don’t know - but whatever it was, it worked. We clicked almost instantly. It was incredible. _He_ was incredible. I felt like I had been in love my whole life.”

He had to learn not everything buried in wood was a nail.

“You met him too, you know,” Gustave said, dangling it in front of Olivier.

“When?” Olivier asked, because he couldn’t resist.

“Sierra Leone, 2015.”

Olivier went very still, like someone had pulled out his batteries. The dawning realisation on his mottled face was brittle, too hard around the edges. His mouth worked like he was chewing on something unpleasant that he couldn’t spit out yet. There was a satisfaction in that which Gustave savoured, even as it ached to keep talking.

“I was with him the day you told us to abandon the camp,” Gustave said, “The man in the bed you didn’t even look at when you and your Dragoons came into the hospital tent in all your expensive, perfect gear and told us that anyone who could walk had half an hour to get out and decontaminate, because we were leaving. Do you remember? I had a sponge in my hand because he was too weak to wash himself any more. That was him. That was Marcel.”

“We’ve been through this, Kateb,” Olivier said, his voice laced with a low warning, “The contamination was out of control. Half the staff were infected already, we couldn’t risk any more casualties.”

“The supplies had been rerouted for weeks before you made that call. Weeks. How were we supposed to control it when we couldn’t even get disinfectant?”

Olivier shook his head, “The camp was already lost by then. You know that. We decided those supplies could save lives elsewhere instead of trying to fight a losing battle.”

“We decided? _We?_ I don’t remember anyone asking me, or Marcel, or any of the doctors and nurses who were the ones actually fighting that losing battle,” Gustave said. His breathlessness was giving way to flames that licked his belly and burnt his tongue. He wanted to scream, “The doctors and nurses who were left behind with the rest of the sick and the dying because there’s no room in the back of a military jeep for a fucking IV drip. You decided the camp was lost weeks before, but there was suddenly no time for a structured evacuation? No time to organise support so at the very least they didn’t have to die alone lying in a bed of their own shit and piss?”

Olivier was ready for his anger and saw fit to match it with his own, “An evac to _where?_ The whole country was in crisis, anywhere we could have went was already overwhelmed. We’d only be moving them to let them die somewhere else.”

“At least they wouldn’t have been alone.”

“Who forced you to leave, Kateb? Who pointed a gun at your head, if staying meant so much to you?” Olivier demanded.

“Fuck you,” Gustave spat, “Fuck _you._ ”

“You left because despite your bleeding heart, you knew staying there for one second longer was pointless,” Olivier said, relentless and brutal even in his truths, “You left because you knew I was right.”

Olivier was right. He was right in Sierra Leone and he was right in Svalbard and he was right in all the petty little arguments they’d had about everything in between. Gustave still couldn’t let it go. Still couldn’t close the door, still couldn’t wrap the wound. He would pick at it forever until not even a scar could form. Marcel would ache for the rest of his life, and he’d let it. He didn’t want to stop hurting, but he wanted-- what? Vindication? Acknowledgement? Someone - _oh please god, Olivier_ \- to look him in the eye and say, ‘it happened, and it happened to you’.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Olivier said. His voice was quieter, softer, but not cowed. It seesawed nauseatingly between defiance and pity, “I’m sorry for your man but I’m not sorry for the choice I made. I saved more lives than we lost. I’d do it again if I had to.”

Gustave gave a mirthless laugh that might have been a sob. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and tapped his knuckles on the desk. He’d break his own fingers before he cried in front of anyone in Rainbow, nevermind Olivier. His composure returned to him in pieces, but it returned nonetheless. It was still a long cold minute before he could meet his eyes again.

“I’m glad you’re a good man, Olivier; really, I am. I can only imagine the things you would be capable of if you weren’t,” he said. His smile was thin and watery, “And that is why were are and always will be _nothing_ alike.”

 

\--

 

They ate in silence, the silver foil of the MREs warped and glinting under the red aching lights. It should have been tense, should have been cutting and bruised and at the very least awkward, but neither of them had the energy to keep it up.

Gustave didn’t know why he’d said what he had. Why he had brought up what he had. He wanted to hurt Olivier, he supposed. Like Marcel’s death was some kind of _gotcha_ moment he’d been waiting to spring on him as soon as they were alone, like Olivier would suddenly realise the cost of the so-called greater good. Like he should care somehow.

Instead he had embarrassed himself. A shameless show of self-pity. He had been nursing it for years when he should have let it die. His MRE tasted like copper. Olivier couldn’t look him in the eye.

It was ugly, and it was true.

It was kind of worth it.

 

\--

 

Gustave was no stranger to illness. He seemed to catch every cough and cold and stomach bug that passed through the base. It wasn’t unusual for him to lose a week or two in winter to the flu, regardless of immunisation.

He told people it was part of life as a doctor, but he remembered the distaste in his childhood physician’s voice as he explained his so-called weak constitution to his mother. He was average height for a man his age, but short for an operator; he’d never been the strongest or fastest, not even in his prime.

_Weak constitution._

He didn’t know why that phrase was suddenly stuck in his mind like a popcorn kernel between teeth. He worried at it, turned it over in his hands. He certainly felt weak, his body wracked with shivers and waves of hot-cold-hot. Not uncommon, not unfamiliar. His mind, however…

Trying to hold on to a thought was like grasping at sand. Trying to follow it to its end was like pulling on broken strings. Things felt less and less connected. He faded from one hour into the next, and couldn’t remember getting there. He had moments of lucidity that swam between the clouds when he’d taken to to counting their dwindling supply of water bottles and MREs and writing it down in his notepad, to make sure they were eating and drinking enough - or not too much. It was easy to polish off a second bottle when you couldn’t remember drinking the first; his body didn’t know better, parched by fever as it was.

They were both dehydrated by that point, though not dangerously so. Not yet, anyway. They’d went from two-thirds rations to a cautious half. Gustave knew that if anything went drastically wrong, Lera herself would knock the bricks out the wall with her bare hands to get to them, quarantine be damned.

But there was always the chance she wouldn’t. If there was still no cure, if there was still no way to stop the disease spreading, would she risk it? Risk the lives of two men she cared for or gamble with many? It all came back to the greater good.

The greater _fucking_ good.

“Are you going to be sick?”

Gustave blinked his eyes open and looked around himself in mild confusion. He was standing in the middle of the room with his bed sheet-turned-blanket clenched in one hand. Olivier was lying on the floor at his feet, scowling up at him.

“What?” he asked once his mouth had caught up with his brain.

“You suddenly got up and lurched over here,” Olivier said, “Are you going to be sick?”

Gustave thought about it for a moment. He didn’t realise he’d gotten up in the first place, but while his stomach did roil slightly, he didn’t think there was any immediate danger.

“No,” he said slowly.

“Are you sure?” Olivier asked, “You look like shit.”

Gustave frowned, and resisted the urge to dig the toe of his boot right into Olivier’s ribs.

“Yes I’m sure. Why are you lying on the floor?”

“I wanted to exercise, and then I didn’t,” he said. His injured wrist was cradled against his chest. He rubbed it absently. It must have ached terribly without any painkillers.

“You should be resting,” Gustave said, “In a _bed_.”

“Says you,” Olivier said. He struggled to get to his feet from where he was lying; Gustave offered his hand on reflex, and was surprised when he took it., “You should sit down before you fall down.”

Gustave tried to pull his hand away with an annoyed huff, but Olivier twisted his hold to grab him by his wrist instead.

“Have you slept a wink since you hit that button?” he persisted.

“Let go of me, you oaf,” Gustave hissed, baring his teeth. He tried again to pull away but he was _weak_ , and Olivier was not; the more he pulled back, the closer he was forced until he was almost chest to chest with him. The bed sheet dropped to the floor with a sigh of cheap cotton, pooling around their feet.

“No-one’s going to die if you lie down for a few hours. The ceiling won’t collapse, Lera won’t make a breakthrough, I won’t choke on my own tongue,” Olivier said, his face drawn into a heavy scowl.

“What a pity,” Gustave said. He knew he sounded petulant, bratty for a man of forty, but the grip on his wrist was starting to hurt. Olivier had four inches and nearly thirty pounds of an advantage over him, with or without the disease. He had handled men bigger than that but it was hard to flatten the panic that crawled up his throat, sour on his tongue, “Now let me go.”

Olivier’s eyes narrowed, searching for something in Gustave’s carefully curated expression. He was suddenly still, stony, unnaturally so; he brought his other hand up hesitantly, trembling, his fingers ghosting millimeters from the heated skin of his cheek before drifting off again.

“You need to take care of yourself,” he said, pushing Gustave’s wrist away from himself with enough force to make him stagger back, “Don’t you understand? There’s no-one else here who can do it for you.”

There were a thousand things Gustave could have spat back in retaliation, but none of them came to mind. He dipped to pick up the dropped bed sheet, avoiding Olivier’s expectant gaze. His cheek was burning where he’d almost touched him; he could feel it more than where he had actually held his wrist. Gustave didn’t know if Olivier meant he wouldn’t look after him if things went south, or if he thought he couldn’t. It didn’t matter either way.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” he said.

“Please,” Olivier said, soft, insistent, the word catching in his throat like it would choke him, “For once in your life, don’t argue with me.”

He twisted the thin fabric between his hands like he was wringing his own neck, then nodded. He was tired. So tired. Sleep wouldn’t come but it wouldn’t hurt to try again. He shuffled back to his seat at the desk and sat down, his head swimming, his breath short. It was only then Olivier returned to his bed.

 

\--

 

_GIGN-DOC: I hope you’ve been remembering to rest up and eat well_

_CBRN-FINKA: dont start_

_GIGN-DOC: Don’t jeopardize your wellbeing for this. You’ve been making progress with your condition._

_CBRN-FINKA: please dont lecture me when im trying to save ur life_

_GIGN-DOC: Meds at least??_

_CBRN-FINKA: why are drs alway the worst patients. u cant tell me to do anything when ur not even trying to do the same. u are the sick one. stop patronising me and go to sleep_

_GIGN-DOC: I’m just worried about you_

_CBRN-FINKA: and were not worried about u, monsieur martyr?_

Gustave sighed into the crook of his arm as he re-read the last message Lera had sent him. It would be just like her to work herself into a relapse. He could remember the days when she used to spar and spot with Meghan until she was sick, pushing herself so far that she was nearly bedridden for days afterwards. She wanted to convince herself that she was tired because of the punishing workout, neck and neck with the first ever female SEAL, and not because of her creeping disease.

This wasn’t like that, he knew, and these days her balanced training with the Spetsnaz kept her grounded and healthy. He still couldn’t help fretting about it. She trusted him with the knowledge of something so personal, so bone-deep, that not even her brothers-in-arms knew it.

She was worried about him. Timur was worried about him. Even Olivier was worried about him, apparently.

He supposed it was always easier to worry about someone other than yourself.

Gustave lifted his head from where he’d been resting it on the desk. It felt as heavy as a boulder, like his neck couldn’t hold it up. His whole body was a lead weight. The dim red light saturated the air, making it feel heavy and oppressive despite the cold.

Red. Red, red, red. Feverish and ugly. God, he missed colour. Any colour but _red._

He tried to rub the tiredness from his eyes, but it didn’t help much. He had slept a little, or at least he thought he might have. Every time he drifted off too far, he’d jolt awake with his mouth dry and his heart racing. He felt like he was on the precipice of something great and dark, off-balance, in danger, and if he kept his eyes closed for too long, he’d tip right over.

Olivier was on his knees by his bed again, hands clasped in prayer, rosary tangled around his fingers. He had his back to Gustave and his head resting against the thin mattress; he hadn’t moved in a while, and his breath was shallow and laboured. Had he fallen asleep? He was shivering. He must have been freezing with the cold floor leeching the heat from him.

“Olivier?”

No response. Gustave pushed himself to his feet, gritting his teeth at the effort it took. He crossed the room, stopping a few feet away.

“Olivier, get up already,” he groused, though he didn’t really have the energy to put his heart into it, “Asleep on the floor like a dog.”

Still nothing. Not so much as a twitch. A shiver ran down Gustave’s spine. He stepped closer and put a hand on Olivier’s shoulder, shaking him gently. The movement let his head loll to the side, and Gustave’s stomach dropped.

Blood soaked into the mattress where he had been leaning, black in the red light. It was smeared across his hands, his face, his rosary. Just a nosebleed, he rationalised, just another symptom, but there was more blood than when the he’d been carried to the medbay, hung between Shuhrat and Timur with an arm around each shoulder. There was more blood and he still wasn’t responding, his eyes barely fluttering as Gustave hooked his arms around him and half-lifted, half-dragged him onto the bed.

It left him winded, his arms like jelly, but he made sure Olivier was on his back before he stopped to catch his breath, pillows wedged beneath his head to stop him from choking, layers of bed sheets tucked around him to stop him from freezing. He pried the rosary from his fingers and put them back into his breast pocket for safe keeping, but it was only when Gustave lightly braced his hands on Olivier’s face to try and check his pupil response did he start to come to.

Immediately he began to struggle.

“Hey, hey,” Gustave said, holding him down as best as he could, “It’s fine, you’re fine. You fell asleep while saying your prayers and had a nosebleed.”

Olivier let his head fall back against the pillows. He was still breathing hard, almost panting, but other than that he seemed to be slowing coming back to himself. Gustave passed him the half-empty bottle of water he’d left on his side table.

“How are you feeling?” he ventured, waiting for Olivier to finish taking a sip.

“...Head hurts,” he said with a slight frown. He sounded a little groggy, like he’d just woken up from a deep sleep.

Gustave waited for more, but nothing came. Olivier watched him with a steely eye, as though he was expecting a lecture. He sighed and got up, going to dig through the front-line kit on the floor by the desk. He pulled out a wad of bandages and went back to Olivier’s bed, where he sat down and took back the water bottle to dampen them a little.

Olivier jerked his head away when Gustave reached for his face, only to be fixed in place by a hard glare. He tried again, starting at his chin and working his way up with the wet cloth, taking care to be gentle near his bruises and the split skin on his lip. By the time he’d managed to clean the worst of it off, the bandages were ruined and Olivier’s breathing had mostly levelled out.

He had been watching Gustave the entire time, a sullen set to his mouth. Gustave deliberately ignored it, looking everywhere but his eyes. He found a dry corner of the bandages and began again.

“What are you doing?” Olivier asked after a moment of drifting in silence.

“Drying your face so it won’t freeze off,” he said.

Olivier turned his head to the side with a tight frown, making Gustave pull his hand away. He knew that wasn’t what he meant, but he didn’t want to look too closely, didn’t want to play along with whatever script Olivier had written for them, because there was that feeling again - teetering on the edge of something dangerous.

“You hate me.”

Gustave turned Olivier’s face back towards him. He didn’t miss the way his throat jumped at that, swallowing something down.

“I don’t hate you,” he said, bringing the cloth back up. His face was as clean and dry as it was going to get without a proper wash but Olivier didn’t need to know.

“You should,” Olivier said.

“Maybe,” Gustave let his head dip as he refolded the bandages to another cleanish corner. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, “But I don’t.”

Olivier laughed, the suddenness of it enough to make Gustave jump. It was mirthless and dry, but his smile reached his eyes.

“That’s so--” he began, hesitant like he was grasping for the words, “That’s so fucking _you_ , isn’t it. That’s so…”

He trailed off. His grim smile faded.

“How do you do it, Gustave?” he asked. A shiver ran down Gustave’s spine at the way he said his name - his real name, not Kateb, not Doc, not spat or snarled, “How do you make yourself so easy to love?”

Gustave stared at him, his mouth slightly ajar. He didn’t know what he’d expected Olivier to say next, but it hadn’t been _that_.

“What?”

“Everyone likes you. Everyone loves their Doc,” Olivier said. It was unfair how calm he sounded, barely the slightest tremor to his voice, “Half of Rainbow is crazy about you. Why?”

“Half of--? Jesus, Olivier, you must have lost more blood than I thought,” Gustave muttered, putting the soiled bandages aside. He was done playing nurse if he was going to start acting the fool.

Olivier grabbed his arm, stopping him from standing up.

“You really don’t see it, do you?”

The hand moved from his wrist to his upper arm, more like a caress than a grip.

“Rook looks at you like you hung the moon, Jackal thinks you’re the one to fix him, Ying talks about your work like you’re Jesus Christ reincarnate, and if I have to hear Maestro talk about putting you in a nurse’s outfit one more time--”

“Adriano says that sort of thing about everyone. Haven’t you heard how he wants to make you ‘roar’?” Gustave interrupted, his embarrassment bleeding into anger, “Not to mention that Siu Mei has an appreciation for all humanitarian effort, Julien is like a little brother to me, and Ryad has just moved into a new apartment with Miles and they are very happy together, all of which you would know if you just pulled your head out your ass and stopped-- God, just stopped _projecting_ whatever issue you have with me onto other people!”

From wrist, to arm, to neck: Olivier’s fingers skirted the short hairs above his collar, blissfully cool against his overheated skin. Gustave wanted to lean into it. He pulled away as far as Olivier would let him.

“Glaz is in love with you,” Olivier said softly, “Do you love him too?”

Gustave swallowed, clenched his fists. What could he even say to that? What did Olivier want him to say?

“Is this about Marcel?” he asked, and he almost hoped it was because he didn’t know what to do if it wasn’t.

Olivier flinched. He gave a single shake of his head, barely perceptible. Gustave could feel pressure on his neck, pulling him closer by inches, drawing him in. His body was a traitor, letting his resistance slip.

“They want you because you’re a good man,” he said, “You said I was a good man too.”

_Why don’t they want me? Do you want me? Could you want me?_

Gustave could feel the sharp edges of their shared loneliness, desperate as a sucking chest wound. It was hard to stay angry when that heat caved in on itself, too weak to resist the hand on his cheek, the shudder in his breath. They were already so close, would it really hurt to--?

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Gustave said, his own fingers creeping up Olivier’s chest, digging into the fabric of his flak jacket to anchor himself, “You’re sick.”

Nose to nose, breathing each other in, the first rasp of stubble on over-sensitised skin.

“So are you.”

_So am I._

A smear of lips against lips, Gustave catching the corner of Olivier’s mouth as he snaked his arms around his neck, too hungry, too desperate, kissing like he was pulling a bandaid off, like he was afraid to feel it. He closed his eyes and thought _this could be anyone in the world_ , but it wasn’t just anyone, it was Olivier. Olivier with his hard eyes and blunt tongue and heart that wanted too much, Olivier who carried the world on his shoulders and who crushed him closer in a one-armed embrace.

Gustave shifted from sitting on the edge of the bed to half-lying on it, one leg hooked over Olivier’s for purchase. He felt like there were too many layers between them, too many he could hope to strip away; he wanted to feel skin on skin, skin _in_ skin before he crawled out of his own but it was impossible, too far, too much--

Teeth, and tongue, and a moan that felt like it had been pulled up from his boots. The fingers in his hair tightened until it became painful, and his gasp only let more of Olivier in. It was overwhelming, a full-body shiver that threatened to shame him apart. He loosened his death grip on his jacket to snake a hand into the gap he’d made between them, fingers to Oliver’s lips to stop him - to stop himself, too.

“Enough,” he said, voice slurred by his own knuckles as he pressed his mouth to them and tried to breathe through the tremors, “Please.”

Olivier was coiled like a spring beneath him, a hair-trigger trap waiting to snap shut on unsuspecting fingers, but he stopped. The hand in his hair dropped to his back and stayed their, closed fist rubbing small and should-be soothing circles between his shoulder blades.

The bed rocked like a boat on the open ocean, the whole room sinking with it. When he pressed his face to Olivier’s chest, he couldn’t see the red light or the horizon.

At least one of them had the sense to pull the sheets around them before the tide came rolling in.

 

\--

 

Tachanka leaned back in his chair and sighed at the comms device in his hand.

“He loves mankind so much, he will forgive us our trespasses and keep us all in his eternal grace,” he said.

“Who?” Shuhrat twitched, looking up from the cards he was holding, “God?”

“No: Doc!” Tachanka said with a rumbling laugh. He turned the screen around to show him, earning a dismissive huff.

Timur put his own cards down to pry the device from Tachanka’s hands, wanting to see for himself. It was grainy footage of the medbay, two indistinct figures huddled together in the corner - Doc and Lion, of course. Lion was lying on one of the beds with Doc sitting by his side, dabbing his face with a cloth of some kind. They were talking, though there was no sound coming through.

Timur liked Doc. Liked him a lot. He supposed a lot of people in Rainbow did, though he didn’t know how many would go so far as to consider him a friend. Timur was one of them. He found Doc to be kind, and patient, and cultured, and he liked his movie recommendations and his dry sense of humor. He had half a dozen books under his bed he still hadn’t returned to him, but Doc never once pestered him about it. They spoke fairly often, when they had the time. He knew Lion had done something to upset Doc in their shared past, but he had never had the brass neck to ask what.

Lion put his hand on Doc’s arm, ran it from his elbow to his shoulder, and caught him by the back of the neck. Doc didn’t pull away. They stayed like that for long enough that Timur thought the screen had frozen.

“Chechenka, stop spying,” Lera scolded him from across the table. She wasn’t playing with them since she was still pressed to find a cure, but she claimed their background chatter helped her focus.

“Lerochka, lisichka, when will you mop my brow for me like that?” Tachanka asked. The withering glare it earned him only made him grin harder.

“I’ll mop this floor with your ass first, Sacha. Now let me work,” she said.

Timur handed the device back to Tachanka and something in his stomach shifted. He felt guilty, and not just for prying. At least Doc would forgive him for whatever it was.

“Go see him, you little creep,” Shuhrat said, smirking over the edge of his cards. The ribbing was good-natured, but Timur still frowned. _He_ hadn’t been the one to bring up the cameras.

“He could probably use the company after being stuck with that blowhard for so long,” Tachanka added.

He was right. Timur nodded. He’d think about it.

(He’d thought about it.)

 

\--

 

For the first time in days, Gustave was warm - not the flash heat of fever, though he could feel his undershirt sticking to his skin with rapidly cooling sweat, but the genuine and pleasant warmth that came with sleep. Its drowsiness clung to him like a residual film, sticky and slow to clear; the dull throb behind his eyes was as present as ever, making the room spin when he lifted his head.

Someone was calling his name.

It wasn’t Olivier, who was still asleep, his broad chest rising and falling with the sea-swell of his breathing. His face was uncharacteristically peaceful, open almost, with slack lips and hard lines all softened. He looked younger than he had in all the time Gustave had known him, and he was pricked with the lingering desire to kiss him again.

The familiar frown returned when Gustave sat up instead, taking his warmth with him. He was quick to tuck the sheets back in around him again, not wanting to wake him so soon. They couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour or two, if he could judge by his weariness. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he could sleep for a week and it wouldn’t make a difference. Hadn’t he always been this tired?

His name again: soft, insistent. Concerned, or maybe a quiet appeal. It seemed to come from the thin air behind him, from nothing at all. He almost answered in kind, _Marcel_ so close to dripping off his tongue, but Marcel had never called him Doc.

When he stood, the pain in his head sharpened to a needle point. The room blurred and twisted as he tried to make him way to the desk that had been his useless fortress for the week. The voice saying his name was clearer then. It sounded panicked. It sounded familiar, it sounded like--

“Timur?”

Gustave swayed towards the door. Timur, wan-faced and wide eyed, watched him through the portal window. He said something, his lips moving silently; a split-second later, Gustave heard his name from behind him again. The comms device, of course, sitting on the desk with it’s low-battery light flashing.

Guilt washed over him, followed by a wave of nausea. He hadn’t done anything wrong, he hadn’t, but the look on Timur’s face made him feel sick.

“What did you see?”

Timur’s brow creased, his mouth thinned.

 _I can’t hear you_ , the comms device behind him crackled. A pause, and then: _Is that blood?_

“Blood? No, I-- I washed that off. There’s no…”

He looked down at his hands: they were clean, until they weren’t. One black drip, then another. He touched his face, his mouth; his fingertips came away slick.

_Doc, you’re bleeding! Doc? Doc!_

The room pitched forward, and Gustave with it. He caught himself against the frigid metal of the door. The voice shouting his name became louder, too loud, one voice on top of another. Gustave closed his eyes, and tried to block it out. He let his forehead come to rest against the glass, fogged with his breath. It felt good to the touch, smooth, cold. He was only sorry he was making such a mess of it.

 

\--

 

There was light all around him. Clean, sharp, bright enough to sting his eyes when he opened them even a crack. He blinked, frowned, closed them again.

It wasn’t red.

It wasn’t _red._

“Nelle, is he--?”

“I think he’s waking up.”

“...I’ll get the doctor.”

“About time! Ah, no, not you. Keep going--”

“Shh! Not so loud.”

A flutter of voices around him, familiar and fuzzy. Indistinct shapes moving beyond his eyelids. A hand found his. He squeezed it with what little strength he could gather and heard the sharp intake of breath.

When he opened his eyes again, he could see Julien sitting by his bedside, hand in hand. Emmanuelle hovered just behind him. The third voice had been Gilles, already gone to fetch the doctor. It took him a moment to get his bearings, to catalogue the aches in his body and the room he was in.

A hospital, he surmised. That made sense.

The room itself was clean and bright, half-hidden by enough flowers to look like an explosion in a florists. Some bouquets were starting to wilt, others were still full; a vase of fresh violet-blue irises sat on the windowsill, nearly lost behind some of the more extravagant arrangements.

Irises were his favourite. He couldn’t remember who he told.

“Hi,” Emmanuelle said.

“Hi,” Gustave croaked back.

Her smile was effervescent; Julien tried to hide his behind Gustave’s own hand. The pure relief in it soaked through him to the bone, easing the dull anxiety of waking up and not remembering exactly how and when he’d gotten there.

“You had us worried,” Emmanuelle said. She perched at the foot of the bed, one hand going to Julien’s shoulder, “You’ve been gone for a while.”

 _Worried._ The word filtered through the fog in his head, touched something hot and sparking there. He swallowed around the unbearable dryness in his mouth.

“How--?”

“Lera found the cure,” she said, “It was touch and go for a while - they had to put you in an induced coma - but you pulled through.”

“You’ve been asleep for three weeks, Gus,” Julien said, as though he could read Gustave’s mind. His distress was palpable, his smile going crooked. He looked like he was going to cry. Gustave didn’t mind if he did; he would probably join in.

Three weeks, god. He had certainly felt like he could have slept for three weeks, but it was a long time to lose.

“And the others?”

“Fine. They’re all fine,” Emmanuelle said. She cocked her head, “Even your guardian angel.”

The hot spark was back again, shivering down his spine to settle in his stomach. It must have been all over his face, because Emmanuelle looked entirely too much like she had caught wind of a particularly good secret. She wouldn’t let it go until she sniffed it out.

He wet his lips, tried to rein in his expression, his excitement, his prickling guilt.

“Has he been to visit?”

She held his gaze for a moment, brows creeping towards her hairline. She reached over, slowly, deliberately, and flicked something hanging off the IV bag stand. Wooden beads clicked off the metal pole. A cross cheerfully swayed back and forth. A crucifix, he realised.

Olivier’s crucifix.

Gustave smirked. It was never too late to start believing in angels.

**Author's Note:**

> The alternative title was "Two Emotionally Incompetent Men In Total Denial Over Desperately Seeking Validation from Each Other For Totally Different Reasons", but it just wasn't catchy enough, yfm?
> 
> You can find me at brood-mother if you want to say hi.
> 
> (You might see a smutty little sequel in the future, depending on the reaction this gets.)


End file.
